During its first six months in space, NASA's IRIS telescope has snapped stunning images of an obscure layer of the sun, revealing previously unseen violence and complexity in the lowest slivers of our star's atmosphere, scientists say.

The IRIS Observatory launched in June and its name is short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. The small spacecraft is designed to collect data on the interface region, a little-understood area spanning the 3,000 to 6,000 miles (4,800 to 9,600 kilometers) between the solar surface and outer ...